A Masterclass in Absurdity
Chicken bones and pizza boxes littered the table, alongside a half-empty bottle of cola.
Plastered right in the middle of the living room wall was the title of our next scenario.
.
"...So, this is our next assignment?"
Deokhu asked, rubbing his tired face with both hands.
"Yeah. That's the one."
I gave a brief reply and flipped open my laptop.
Up until now, we had done pretty well. School ghost stories, urban legends, black magic, and even an army of living mannequins. They were all life-or-death struggles, but we had resolved them and survived, so I felt we could take some pride in our track record.
Through that process, we had gained confidence.
A belief that every story has a solution, a weakness, and that we could find it.
But...
"Just a heads-up, this scenario... is a bit different."
"How is it different? Didn't you say earlier it was a bonus stage? That it was B-rank?"
Minhye asked, her eyes filled with anxiety.
"It is B-rank. Actually, to be precise, it's absolute garbage."
I gave a bitter smile and pressed the enter key.
The screen filled with text I had scribbled down years ago, dripping with anger at the world and edgy, adolescent cynicism.
"Take a look first. See how badly I ruined this ghost story."
Everyone gathered around the screen.
TITLE:The Maze of Choice (Original Title: Red Paper, Blue Paper)
1. ORIGINAL GHOST STORY
A hand reaches up from the toilet hole and asks, "Do you want red paper, or blue paper?" If you choose red, your body is torn apart or drenched in blood. If you choose blue, all your blood is sucked out until you turn blue and die of suffocation. This is the origin of South Korean school ghost stories that have been popular since the 1990s.
2. MY ADAPTATION (Subtitle: Room with No Exit)
I reinterpreted this ghost story not as a simple horror piece, but as a theater of the absurd. The theme? The violence of forced choice. In modern society, we are forced to make countless choices, but none of them are correct, and they all ultimately lead to ruin. I wanted to satirize this reality.
[DETAILED SETTINGS]
An outhouse public restroom abandoned halfway up the Gwanaksan hiking trail, where foot traffic is rare. A closed space filled with worn-out tiles, a flickering lightbulb, and a terrible stench. The moment the protagonist enters a stall to do their business, the door locks and the space shifts. The exit door disappears, leaving only a corridor of restroom partitions stretching out like a maze.
1. The Ghost's Rule: Whichever stall you enter, you will hear the ghost's voice: "Do you want red paper, or blue paper?"
2. Choosing Red Paper: Bundles of red paper pour down from the ceiling and walls, peeling the protagonist's skin off like thin sheets of paper.
3. Choosing Blue Paper: Cold blue liquid and paper bundles back up from inside the toilet, filling the protagonist's respiratory tract and esophagus.
4. Making No Choice: The restroom door will never open. The protagonist will slowly go mad or starve to death in that narrow stall, breathing in the stench of excrement.
5. Naming Another Color: What if they say yellow paper, white paper, etc.? It is considered a "rule violation," and both the red and blue punishments are executed simultaneously.
The final scene ends with shredded pieces of red and blue paper scattered across the restroom floor, covering the protagonist's corpse. No music plays during the ending credits.
Author's Note: There is no exit in this world. Don't torture yourself with false hope.
Once the briefing ended, Minhye was the first to speak.
"Um... excuse me, Sunbae."
"Yeah?"
"Sunbae, did something... really bad happen to you back then? Like getting dumped by a girlfriend, or failing your classes..."
"...I think it was both. Plus, I got instantly rejected from a writing contest on top of that."
"I knew it."
Minhye burst into a fit of incredulous laughter she had been holding back.
"Are you kidding? That's... seriously the worst. So you wrote this garbage wishing for the world to end? This isn't a scenario, it's just a diary entry laced with curses."
"I can't even argue with that."
It was embarrassing, but completely undeniable.
Deokhu asked, his face pale.
"Hyung... then what's the solution? How does the protagonist survive? With the mannequins, we had the high-frequency weakness, and with the school ghost, we had to uncover the truth. What is it this time?"
Unable to look Deokhu straight in the eye, I averted my gaze.
"There isn't one."
"What?"
"I said there isn't one. No solution."
"Huh..."
For the first time, Deokhu looked at me with a thoroughly pathetic expression.
I let out a sigh and added an explanation.
"I told you. I had a massive grudge against the world back then. So I intentionally designed an inescapable situation. A perfect blueprint for death that no hero, no genius, could ever survive. That was my exact intention."
"Th-then...?"
Deokhu stammered.
"Are we just... going there to die? To choose whether we want to die in red or blue?"
Deokhu and Minhye stared at me, utterly dumbfounded.
Even Seyeon couldn't hide her bewilderment as she spoke up.
"I've researched the evolution of ghost stories, and usually, these forced-choice legends have a loophole. Like shouting 'yellow paper' or saying you don't need any and running away... But this..."
Seyeon pointed to [Rule 4] and [Rule 5] of my scenario.
"You blocked off every single one of those loopholes, Sunbae. If you don't choose, you starve to death, and if you give a different answer, you die even more horribly. If this were a game, it'd be considered a game-breaking bug..."
Minhye chimed in.
"It's basically a death warrant. A literal death warrant. How are we supposed to solve this... I'd honestly rather fight thousands of mannequins. At least those broke when we hit them."
Minhye slumped onto the sofa with a tearful face.
Ugh... that really is the problem.
Gwanaksan, the setting of the scenario.
With its rugged terrain and strong yin energy, it had been the backdrop for all kinds of ghost stories since ancient times. And of all places, it had to be an outhouse halfway up that mountain, tucked away where nobody ever went.
Complete isolation, with nowhere to run and no way to call for help.
If things went according to the scenario, we would have to face a ghost that didn't care about logic. Physical attacks? Impossible. The ghost was nothing more than a formless voice and bundles of paper. Deokhu's high-frequency device? Useless. The ghost wasn't made of plaster.
Why did I write such a half-assed script... Sigh...
But still.
I can't just die here.
I looked at my team and spoke.
"Yeah. You're right. We can't beat this head-on."
"Our weapons, common sense, logic... none of it will work inside that restroom. Because that's how I wrote it."
"Then what do we do? Just give up?"
"No."
I stood up and began to pace slowly around the living room.
"Let's change our perspective. Imagine you're playing a game, and the boss monster is completely invincible. It doesn't take damage, magic doesn't work, and you can't run away. What do you do then?"
"...Pull the power plug?"
Deokhu suggested tentatively.
"Close."
I grinned.
"If you can't win by the rules inside the game, you bring in authority from outside the game. You use a cheat code, or you rewrite the rules of the game entirely."
I pulled out my smartphone.
On the screen, the two authorities granted to me for this assignment were active.
"If the protagonist in the scenario can't solve the problem, it means the author has to step in and handle it, right?"
I held up my fingers to my team.
"The core of this operation is the destruction of logic. If the ghost tries to force some nonsensical choice of red or blue on us, we hit back with even greater nonsense. We flip the entire board so the ghost's logic can't even function."
"Flip the board...?"
Seyeon's eyes sparkled with interest.
"How are you going to do that?"
"Think about it. What is the toilet ghost's reason for existing? To terrify people, force a choice, and kill them, right? That's its identity, and that's the genre of this scenario: horror, thriller."
I clenched my fist.
"But what if that place stops being a stage for horror... and becomes a stand-up comedy show, or a chaotic marketplace overrun by nightmare customers?"
"...What?"
"The ghost makes its grand, dramatic entrance, but nobody is scared. Instead, they get angry and annoyed at it. What if they treat the ghost like some annoying street peddler?"
My team tilted their heads in confusion.
I spoke the words deliberately.
"Nightmare. Customers."
"N-nightmare customers?"
"We have a weapon called Casting. It doesn't brainwash people; it assigns them a psychological role. So, what if we recruit the strongest minds—the most utterly unreasonable people we can find—and shove them into that restroom?"
I looked at Minhye and asked.
"Minhye. You've dealt with nightmare customers while working part-time, right?"
"Ugh, don't even get me started. Drunk old men throwing tantrums... you literally cannot reason with them."
"Exactly."
I grinned.
"The cure for a ghost you can't reason with is a human you can't reason with. The terror a ghost inflicts? That only works on rational people. To someone who's dead drunk and out of their mind, or someone with a personality so fierce they fear nothing in this world, wouldn't a ghost just be an annoyance?"
Seyeon gasped as if she had just realized something.
"Ah! I get it. So instead of fighting it ourselves, we're going to deploy special 'actors' who can completely ignore the ghost's rules?"
"Yes. Fight fire with fire. Fight nonsense with even greater nonsense."
I pulled the whiteboard closer and began writing down the plan.
"And... we'll use this to change the very concept of the restroom. Instead of a terrifying space meant solely for killing people in a scenario, we'll turn it into a public facility that must be strictly managed and controlled."
"Hmm..."
"Before the scenario starts, we'll head to Gwanaksan. Think of it as a rehearsal... or rather, location scouting."
"To cast our actors?"
"Yeah. Just two should do. We don't have much time."
"Are you going to cast them in advance?"
"No, we can't do that. It's not like we can just ask them to gather near the restroom at that exact time."
"Ah... right."
"The roles we need are..."
I held up two fingers.
"First, the most unreasonable drunkard in the world."
"Second, a foul-mouthed cleaning manager who absolutely cannot stand seeing her territory get dirty."
Deokhu's jaw dropped.
"Wait, are you seriously going to make those people fight a ghost? Is that even possible?"
"I have to make it possible. That's what directing is all about."
"Ah... it sounds really hard..."
"No, I can do it."
I stared at the scenario title pasted on the wall.
"Alright, let's get ready. It's time to change the genre. From B-grade horror to a chaotic black comedy."
"Okay! We'll trust you!"
Was it because I said we were changing it to a chaotic black comedy?
Energy began to surge through the hideout once again.
It felt as though their fear had turned into curiosity, and their helplessness into anticipation.
Let's begin this bizarre audition.